CYPHER’s debut camp and official event program at Burning Man 2018! What an incredible international community of beautiful humans who together made this magic happen. So much love and gratitude. WE DID IT!

A seam is forged in the architectural and sonic center of the space. Participants interface with elements of performance and technology. The focal center encompasses a live multidisciplinary audio/visual experience inside our activated installation. A techno-soaked decompression chamber of utmost comfort and care.

These rituals shape participants perception through intimate guided A/V mediations surrounding an LED sphere. “Cheryl” the techno-ball, captures biofeedback which informs the trajectory of each composed experience. A gift of communal inclusion through sculpted sound, light, and performance yields the veil between human and machine more pliable, porous, and wandered.

INNER OASIS

Join us for a sweet pause in this mini restoration and inspiration session for the body, mind and soul. An offering of light movement and explorations to connect to a nourishing heart-centered state. We’ll play with our light sculpture and learn how to ignite your light within! We’ll explore nourishing ways to restore energy and access your heart’s intelligence.

YOGA : F A D E D / K I R T A N

An accessible movement practice that operates through the lens of chaos magic. It feeds off many methods of body based practices that invigorate the energetic system, where a heightened perception of self and community is activated. The environment is cuddled by soundscapes from Succubass + lush movement guided by Matt Drews.

Eject from the norm, through a guided improvisation fueled by sensation and poetic imagery; focus on ritualistic movement and the cultivation of trance states through dance, yoga, and somatic techniques. Fade into wholeness.

Below is a selection of reviews and press features from Ableton’s Loop Summit & Festival for Music Makers, for which I’ve held the position of Head of Programming for the first three editions (2015-2017).

What a pleasure and an honour to be working at Funkhaus again for the next week. This really is one of my favourite places in Berlin and being here gives me so much creative inspiration. In the middle of crazy Festival prep today, the late afternoon light was so beautiful I took a walk to appreciate the beauty of this building in the calm before the wonderful storm of Loop.

I moved to you 5 years ago this month, and how that time has flown. I never knew love for a place before living in you, and now I’m head over heels. You can be a harsh bitch who kicks me when I’m down and you provide both immense challenges and endless frustrations. But your magic, rough charm and raw beauty continue to take my breath away every single day. You and your inhabitants fill my heart with endless inspiration and make my soul sing. As dysfunctional as our relationship is, you’ve changed my life completely by giving me the tools to discover myself, and for that I’m eternally grateful. No matter where the future takes me, you are now my home and always will be.

“In a festival context, participants have the opportunity to come away exhausted, but somehow changed, tired and with hangovers, but possibly with renewed hope and dreams.” — the incredible Robyn Archer

… plus some of my other reflections after spending 7 intensive days with 41 festival managers at the Atelier for Festival Managers 2014. Read more here.

9th November 2014. 25 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. 25 years of Freedom. To commemorate, Berlin presents its largest ever public art installation: Lichtgrenze by brothers Christopher & Marc Bauder, produced flawlessly by my past employer from transmediale festival, Kulturprojekte Berlin. Stretching 15 kilometres across the city, Lichtgrenze traces the path of the Berlin Wall with 8000 white helium balloons, released into Berlin’s skies after three days on the evening of 9th November, the day the Wall fell 25 years ago.

In my mind this cultural project represents everything public art should be. Ephemeral, reflective, fragile, inviting and transformational. It offers an open invitation for people young and old to join together in common spirit, contemplation and serendipitous exchange. Walking this pilgrimage over the course of this weekend, along with tens of thousands of other Berliners and Berliners-at-heart, was an experience I’ll never forget and an inspiring reminder of why I do the work I do.

This month I was awarded a Master of Arts (Creative Media) with Distinction from University of Brighton, based on the research topic A creative calling: Migrant creatives and the labour of love in Berlin. My thesis studies foreign creative labourers living and working in Berlin, as indicative of labourers in creative cities around the world. The dissertation explores the meanings of Berlin to migrant creative labourers and the ways in which ‘labour of love’ influences work- and lifestyles in a global creative city. A huge thank you to the 200+ Berlin-based migrant creative labourers who completed my research survey with such passionate and insightful responses. Without you this project would not have been possible. I plan to continue and expand on this research very soon – labour practices in the creative industries are an important and under-examined topic. More info on the thesis and findings can be found in the abstract below.

Abstract

A creative calling: Migrant creatives and the labour of love in Berlin is a study of foreign creative labourers living and working in Berlin, as indicative of labourers in creative cities around the world. The central research questions of this dissertation, “What is the meaning of Berlin to migrant creative labourers?” and “How does ‘labour of love’ influence workstyles in a global creative city?” are addressed through analysis of survey data from over 200 migrant creatives in Berlin.

The dissertation uses the theoretical framework of social constructionism and a combined research approach of qualitative and quantitative data analysis to examine themes including the socio-spatial work-styles of migrant creatives, negotiations of mobility, relations to place, creative city as ‘base’ and how ‘labour of love’ influences their work-styles and lives.

Firstly representations of Berlin as a creative city are examined, drawing on Maile & Griffiths’ psychosocial imaginary of Berlin (2012) and its representation as a global creative city. New mobility patterns are analysed as well as motivations for migration beyond traditional notions of nationhood (Saunders, 2010; Wang, 2004).

Literature surrounding relations to place and creative locales is reviewed, including Castells’ Network Society (1996), Sassen’s studies of creative subculture territorialisation (2004, 2001) and Lange’s work on the socio-spatial strategies of culturepreneurs (2006a, 2006b). Evolving workstyles of creative labourers are analysed (Cohen, 2012), the ‘labour of love’ theory is discussed in relation to exploitative creative labour practices (Menger, 1999) and McRobbie’s writings on creative labourer as personification of increasingly inescapable work structures (2010) are applied. An analysis of survey data places Berlin’s migrant creatives in the context of new forms of migration and mobility patterns across borders; history and representations of Berlin as a creative city; blurry lines between paid and unpaid labour; and negotiations of socio-spatial workstyles whilst pursuing a ‘labour of love’.

What emerges is a web of personalised and individualised navigations through working life at the forefront of new creative labour praxis. Findings reveal migrant creatives to be highly educated, multi-skilled and entrepreneurial, and drawn to creative cities like Berlin by existential motivations including the search for a more fulfilling, ‘creative’ life. However, romanticised representations of working as a creative labourer in Berlin often differ from the practical and financial realities of working life in the global creative city.

The creative ‘labour of love’ is revealed as a site of struggle, comprised of under-employment and under-payment, high levels of competition for poorly paid jobs, exploitative working conditions, inadequate support networks or financial safety nets and limited cultural integration. In negotiating such challenges, migrant creatives often using the creative city as ‘base’ or anchorage point while continuing to work internationally. While Berlin remains ‘Mecca’ for an international creative class, questions remain on how rewarding or sustainable the creative ‘labour of love’ is in the global creative city. Final discussion includes implications of the study in the wider field as well as ideas for further research.

Image: 25-metre high mural ‘Die Umarmung’ (2009) painted by Madrid’s Boa Mistura urban art collective on the side of the East Side Hotel, Friedrichshain. Photograph: Matthias Haker Photography (2010), reproduced with permission from the artist.

Recently I was interviewed by arts & culture website IGNITE ME on what it’s like to manage arts festivals, and how to get a ‘foot in the door’ of this competitive industry.
The interview is now online so please have a read, and feel free to leave a comment.

The two Australian festivals I worked on this year – Underbelly Arts and ISEA2013 – have both been nominated for BEST ARTS PROGRAM OF 2013 in the Sydney Music Art & Culture [SMAC] Awards. Please go forth and vote, and a huge congratulations to the kick-ass teams that made both these festivals happen <3

At the Neukölln Flowmarkt today I came across a worn old photo album. Inside were pages and pages of tiny square photos from what looked like the 1930s-60s, showing the history of a middle class German family in all its sepia glory – from weddings, birthdays and Christmases, to children playing, fancy dress parties and drunken celebrations. Most of the photos were not high quality but the images gave me an intense feelings of nostalgia and intimacy. How did these precious memories end up for sale at a flea market? The images below – simple snapshots from a Sunday stroll – were inspired by this old album.

Last weekend I took photos for Visualized Berlin, a conference bringing together some of Europe’s most innovative information designers and data artists. Here are a few photos from this very engaging event.

This weekend I photographed Berlin’s Visualized conference on information design and data visualisation. I took the opportunity to take portraits of the participants and organisers, an eclectic group of Germany’s most innovative information designers and data artists. The backdrop to these portraits is a gorgeous work from Raban Ruddigkeit’s Ramix exhibition. Portraiture is an area of photography I have not explored much before, but I’m now thinking of ways I can further experiment with this form.

After a summer hiatus in Sydney and Vancouver, I was happy to spend my first weekend back in Berlin reacquainting myself with the city’s thriving art scene at Art Hack Day Berlin and its culminating exhibition Going Dark, hosted by the awesome guys from LEAP and co-presented by transmediale.

It was great to see so many members of Berlin’s art community out in force to support this event (over 500 I would guess), showcasing 20 works from 50 artists, all on the theme ‘Going Dark’. My favourite works were of the participatory variety, including the DARK LEAKS two-part installation where audience members typed their darkest secrets onto a computer on one side of the exhibition, whilst a tiny mechanical duck-like creature announced these (often bleak) confessions in a monotonous English accent in another room. Jeremy Bailey’s performative intervention, in which he auctioned off 5 of the exhibition artists’ Facebook profiles, was also a highlight.

The only downside to the evening was the fact I broke my 10 year McDonald’s fast by eating part of Kim Asendorf’s installation THERE WILL BE BURGERS. I’m disgusted in myself and can’t get the taste out of my mouth. I guess I was swept away in the victorious moment the installation was liberated from the plinth to the people. But never again.

I’m looking forward to seeing the Berlin Art Hack concept expanded for its next incarnation as part of transmediale in Feb 2014. Berlin: it’s so great to be back!